


Parade

by crookedcig



Series: The Same Boy You've Always Known [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Rhodey, Protective Tony Stark, Rhodey Feels, Rhodeyfest, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, canon compliant injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7515814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedcig/pseuds/crookedcig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Civil War, Rhodey and Tony are roommates, both trying to recover from what happened.  This bit is from Tony's perspective, watching his friend and feeling guilty.</p><p>Title from Leo Kottke's "Parade".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parade

It shouldn’t bother him, seeing people visiting. It was good that people were visiting, good that while he’s away Rhodey’s not by himself all the time.

The fact that Pepper’s only there when he’s not just confirms that Tony poses more of a problem than a solution for at least some of the people who want to see his best friend. Given that they had to come to Boston of all places, the level of effort both in visiting and in avoiding Tony was high enough that it was turning into a thing, the sort of thing that probably would have benefited from therapy, not that he’d ever admit it.  
After a few awkward weeks in the Avenger compound, Rhodey had suggested they move someplace else, someplace that didn’t feel empty besides stale, bitter memories. Not that Stark Tower in New York was any better, and even if the Malibu house had been standing still neither of them would have been comfortable staying there for more than a few nights at a time. It had become so much Pepper’s house, after all that time. So back to Boston it was, close enough to Cambridge that they’d both been asked more than once to come talk to students at MIT. Rhodey was making a regular thing out of it, mentoring or something because he had to keep himself busy. Most of the time, Tony just hid in the shop he’d built himself in the garage in the weeks after he’d bought the house, when Rhodey stopped letting him go to PT appointments.

That had stung more than he’d expected, hearing his sweet platypus ask him to just…stay at the house. Staying at the house meant he wasn’t helping. Staying at the house meant he wasn’t needed. So he holed up in the entropy lab he’d built himself out in the garage and came out now and then to joke with Rhodey, flirt with him and pretend it wasn’t real when the other man’s eyes got a little too close to inspecting what they were doing. Now and then, he caught sight of the back of somebody’s head, or heard a laugh spilling out of the open kitchen window while Rhodey entertained visitors that never came to talk to him.

This time, it was Rhodey coming out into the back yard with two people. Two tall, incredibly handsome people that looked like they belonged on the cover of magazines instead of hanging out in a postage stamp sized backyard. They were both nearly as dark skinned as Rhodey, looking loose and comfortable and like they really knew themselves, like they weren’t upset by what they saw in the mirror, and there was a trick Tony would very much like to learn. The first was instantly recognizable, it would take more than a couple months of moping around for him to forget T’Challa, even if he was harboring a fugitive from the law and it would have been a hell of a lot more convenient to forget the whole thing ever happened. By the time he finally shored up his confidence and slapped on a smile that Rhodey would see right through, both of the men who weren’t his best friend in the universe were heading out towards the car they’d parked up next to the house, like they hadn’t wanted to get too close to the haven’t-showered-in-days stink around the garage. At the very last moment, about to climb into the passenger seat beside T’Challa, the massive man who was with him blinked, turned his head, and looked straight at Tony.

That wasn’t right. He looked near Tony, like he saw Tony not just right then, but everything Tony had done going back all the way to the moment of his birth, every choice he made and every person he’d hurt and every stupid fucked up thing he’d ever done, ripped out of his own mind and laid bare for prying gold eyes to see. Blinking hard as he walked up beside Rhodey, Tony cleared his throat and mostly succeeded in suppressing a shiver when the guy with the eyes like lasers got into the car with T’Challa and disappeared.

“Who was the tall drink of water?” Glancing down when Rhodey glanced up (when was he going to get used to the chair?), Tony felt his eyebrows crawl up towards his hairline. “The one that isn’t the only man on the planet richer than me, I mean.” Rhodey cracked a smile at that and didn’t look tired for a second, which Tony considered a win.

“Heimdall. He’s Thor’s friend, he’s been exploring more of Midgard the last few months.” Turning on wheels instead of his heel, Rhodey headed back into the house. Within hours of buying it, Tony and Dum-E had been putting up ramps where needed, and sure it had two stories but on most days Rhodey could make it up, albeit slowly, if he had reason to. He had a room of his own on the first floor, and most of the time Tony didn’t even sleep in his own room upstairs, conking out on the couch or a cot in the garage instead. Once on a chair in the backyard, which had led to a wicked sunburn and some good natured teasing from his friend.

“Seems like you guys get along.” Following Rhodey into the kitchen, Tony grabbed an apple from a bowl on the counter and fiddled with it, twisting off the stem slowly.

“He’s pretty intense, but he’s not nearly as boisterous Thor.” Getting a bottle of water from the fridge, Rhodey glanced at him again and Tony wondered briefly when he’d stop feeling the swell of relief in his chest that the other man hadn’t left yet. “I think T’Challa just likes showing off. When was the last time you slept?” Verbal whiplash didn’t even begin to cover how fast Rhodey changed conversation topics when it came to foolish mortal things like food and rest. He didn’t even have a chance to lie before Rhodey was ramming into him lightly, herding him towards the stairs with a determined look. “Hand over your phone. And the back up phone. You need at least six uninterrupted hours and I’m not in the mood to haul my ass up there when I hear you playing Angry Birds.”

It had been a long time since Rhodey had mother-henned him like this. He’d done it all alone for years until Pepper got hired, and the two of them had never quite sorted out who was responsible for what. By the time Tony had started actually dating Pepper, Rhodey had quit his well-meaning bullying almost entirely, besides the occasional concerned brow furrow, and the strange mix of need, nostalgia, and annoyance that he still wanted this kind of treatment made Tony dizzy.

He handed over both his phones.

And took a bottle of water with him when Rhodey insisted. It was pretty hard to resist the other man under the best of circumstances, and he hadn’t really slept in about three days at that point. This was hardly the best of circumstances.  
   
**

He’d almost forgotten the pain. The way it curled in his chest and choked him, the panic that started at the base of his skull and swelled and swelled until it felt like there was nothing left of him but fear. He’d almost forgotten the smell, the dry-rot-dank smell of the cave, the burned hair smell that lingered in his clothes leaving him feeling like a lightning strike survivor.

He’d never forgotten Yinsen, because that would have been a road too far. But the panic had faded, paled in comparison to so much other panic between that time and this. How could a cave and a generator and a hole in his chest compare to a nuke, or poisoning his own blood, or watching the woman he loved turn into lava, or his parents killed over and over finally knowing who did it and knowing even more how long he’d been lied to? A cave and a generator and a hole in his chest felt like a cakewalk in comparison, sometimes.

Now was most definitely not one of those times. He could feel the claustrophobia setting back in, the absolute certainty that he was going to die here and nothing was ever going to be alright again. And the worst part was that he’d put himself in this mess. He’d done all of this to himself in a stupid attempt to live up to whatever fucked up legacy Howard had left him, and he hadn’t even been nice to his best friend before all this happened.

That might have been the worst part, really. Knowing that while he was stuck in that fucking cave, marinating in his own self pity and guilt, Rhodey thought he was dead, thought it was all his fault. The only small comfort he had, feeling the thrum of the electromagnet vibrating in his chest, was that Pepper and Happy would try to convince him otherwise. It wouldn’t work, but they’d try. And that was nice.

He didn’t like knowing what his own ribs felt like under his fingertips. Didn’t like that he knew how to identify various parts of his anatomy by touch alone, the cave way too dark to give him any sort of visual markers. At least the scars hadn’t touched his pretty face, right? Just mangled his bones and his organs and his skin, Jesus was his skin ever going to not bear blisters from where sparks and exposed wires hit it?

That was a stupid question. He was stuck in this cave for what little life he had left. They wouldn’t find a body, even if the suit he was building worked right. But it was all out of order, just waking up to find himself hooked into a car battery one minute, and the next there was fire coming out of his palms and people were dying, running away from him screaming because he was getting out, he was escaping dammit he was Tony fucking Stark and this was no way for him to die, not out in the desert like this because of his own damned weapons. Then it was back to Yinsen, but then Yinsen was gone and dead and he wasn’t sure if he was going to make it out alive, even if he did have this big fucking suit and this little niggling idea in the back of his head, what it might mean if he got out and got his brain working on it, overclocked and overheated and overworked.

**

It wasn’t the first time he had the nightmare. Probably wouldn’t be the last, either. The bitch of the thing was that he always woke up before he got out, before he saw the helicopters and Rhodey made that stupid joke and he cracked a real smile for the first time in three months. Time twisted and folded back on itself when he had this nightmare, and all he could really do was hold on for the ride and let it run its course. When he opened his eyes, he’d get up and change his sweat-soaked sheets, take a quick shower, and get back into bed. Probably wouldn’t fall back asleep, but the routine of it was nice. Nightmare, fresh linens, take a shower, lay down. Try not to think of the time(s) you almost died and your own inevitable mortality, fail spectacularly, never sleep again.

Routines were nice.

But this time, something was different. This time when he opened his eyes in the dark room, he could hear someone snoring softly, which was weird since he was awake and that meant he couldn’t be the one making the cute little snuffle noises that weren’t quite loud enough to be irksome. The slide from terror into almost cute snoring was almost too much to deal with, but it wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

Rhodey was sitting in the chair in the corner. Rhodey was snoring, his chin against his chest and his body lax, relaxed like Tony hadn’t seen it in a long time. Rhodey had hauled himself up the stairs not because he heard Tony playing Angry Birds, but just to sit and, what…watch him sleep? Watch over him as he slept?

Something cruel and full of adoration twisted in his chest where the arc reactor had left a hole in him, where Pepper had left a bigger one. Even with the exoskeleton Tony’d been perfecting, even with months and months of PT, even with multiple surgeries that Tony had insisted on paying for, it would have been a strain for his friend to get up those stairs, but there he was. Patient and quiet and snoring into his chest like they’d pulled another all-nighter back in school and he’d dozed off at Tony’s desk, like there wasn’t almost three decades of history between them now. Climbing out of bed, Tony approached carefully, like he was afraid the other man was going to bolt if he moved to fast.

Rhodey didn’t so much as flinch when Tony touched his shoulder lightly. He might have even leaned into it a little bit, snuffling in his sleep and shifting his weight in the chair. Sleeping in a chair was the sort of thing younger men did, younger men who weren’t recovering from a major spinal injury. Grumbling something to that effect, Tony worked one arm under Rhodey’s knees and managed to get the other around his back. He didn’t scoop the other man up into the air so much as he grunted and heaved and strained until Rhodey was more off the chair than on it. It was easy to forget how much muscle the pilot packed on to his frame, hidden under baggy uniform jumpsuits and only slightly better tailored suits. A few staggering steps got them both back over to the bed and Tony didn’t exactly drop Rhodey down onto the pillows…but he wasn’t as careful as he would have wanted to be, clumsy with sleep and exhaustion both, which was like being drunk and hungover at the same time in terms of the massive amount it sucked.

Rhodey curled into the pillows immediately, still asleep, and the twisting thing in his chest did a tap dance this time, pulse uneven and wary.

“This is fine.” Turning away from the bed and the picture Rhodey made in it, Tony shuffled into the bathroom. He had to pee, get some more water into his body. Maybe he’d wander downstairs and make something to eat, that actually sounded like a good idea. Hell, he even brushed his teeth after emptying his bladder, trying to convince himself that yes, this was absolutely fine, he could go make a sandwich and come back and everything would be fine. But when Tony turned to go downstairs, he found he couldn’t make that last step out of the bedroom, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from Rhodey there, wrapped around one of his pillows, hugging it to his chest like it was a person, like he was trying to make up for the emptiness of the rest of the bed.

“This is fine.” Whispering it this time, Tony crawled back into bed and pressed himself in close to Rhodey, wrapped his fingers around the other man’s wrist like he couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t going to wake up to find his friend gone, unsure if it was a dream or not. The patient pulse under his fingertips was the drumbeat that marched him back to sleep.


End file.
